Reply To: Wealth of Nations, and Economics of Abundance

[Brian H]

Hockey stick: “Committee on Energy and Commerce Report (Wegman report)

A team of statisticians led by Edward Wegman, chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, was assembled at the request of U.S. Rep. Joe Barton and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield . The report primarily focused on the statistical analysis used in the MBH paper, and also considered the personal and professional relationships between Mann et al and other members of the paleoclimate community. Findings presented in this report (commonly known as the “Wegman Report”) at a hearing of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations, chaired by Whitfield, included the following:

* MBH98 and MBH99 were found to be “somewhat obscure and incomplete” and the criticisms by McIntyre and McKitrick were found to be “valid and compelling”.
* The report found that MBH method creates a PC1 statistic dominated by bristlecone and foxtail pine tree ring series (closely related species). However there is evidence in the literature, that the use of the bristlecone pine series as a temperature proxy may not be valid (suppressing “warm period” in the hockey stick handle); and that bristlecones do exhibit CO2-fertilized growth over the last 150 years (enhancing warming in the hockey stick blade).
* It is noted that there is no evidence that Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimatology studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians.
* A social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction of at least 43 authors having direct ties to Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him is described. The findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.
* It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to interact with the statistical community. Additionally, the Wegman team judged that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done.
* Overall, the committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.
“
Dyson: I mentioned the review (did you read it?) because it is a different take on the question, that of economics. Nordhaus takes AGW as given.

Gore: The UK education dept. was sued in the UK for using his film, and was allowed to continue only if it was bracketed with warnings about major inaccuracies. Meanwhile, he has taken in over $100 million in royalties and fees. Not bad for a scientific illiterate.

FF does NOT need AGW to justify itself. It is an order of magnitude leap in energy availability per dollar spent, and will advance human society in innumerable ways.